Stephen Sykes has written extensively on Anglican systematic theology. In this case study some of his work will be reviewed as it concerns the Eucharist.

In a work published in 1978 entitled The Integrity of Anglicanism, Sykes argues that Anglicanism needs Christian theology to be presented in the context of a philosophically systematic understanding of the world. Sadly he reflects though, many Anglicans have not appreciated such a need, even though Anglicans have no permission to regard themselves as somehow immune from the critical issues and questions to which systematic theology gives rise (Sykes, 1978: ix). Certainly, he argues, Anglicans cannot believe that the Anglican Communion is an end in itself and therefore systematic theology has the potential to demonstrate deeper self understanding and self criticism (Sykes, 1978: ix-x). An example of the need for more attention to systematic theology within Anglican is the question of whether or not Anglicanism has a coherent identity, “that is, whether it constitutes something which is recognisable” (Sykes, 1978: 1). Some have argued that comprehensiveness is the mark of Anglicanism coherent identity. Sykes defines comprehensiveness as meaning that the Anglican Communion “contains in itself many elements regarded as mutually exclusive in other communion” (Sykes, 1978: 8). Typically this comprehensiveness has been defined in terms like ‘protestant’ and ‘catholic’, but this does not mean that all views are necessarily included, since the Anglican Church of the Reformation excluded some views, for example those who opposed episcopacy and those who felt that the Eucharist could only be celebrated by priests who were in communion with the Pope. Comprehensiveness is a term which needs some qualification and therefore does not indicate that in Anglicanism anything goes (Sykes, 1978: 8). The suggestion of a comprehensiveness within Anglicanism, Sykes argues, seems to be based on a belief that there is set of agreed fundamentals and there are other matters (non-fundamentals) about which it is not necessary to gain agreement. Hooker in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594) made this point when he speaks of fundamentals such as the historic Christian creeds, since they are said to teach the faith as Christ taught it, and Newman makes the same point in his 1837 work entitled Prophetical Office of the Church or Via Media. Sykes casts considerable doubt on this argument, asking “with what justice, … can it be said that the faith taught by Christ is identical with that found in the regula fidei of the second century, or in the orthodox creeds of the fourth century?” (Sykes, 1978: 12). Sykes point seems to be that there must be healthy scepticism about any assumed fundamentals of the Anglican tradition.

Sykes also casts doubt on the view that Anglicanism is a Via Media since the idea is compromised by both practical and political considerations and smacks of “a poverty of thought and of a sheer reluctance to attempt to come to grips with intractably difficult theological material” (Sykes, 1978: 15). The Via Media does have the potential nonetheless to recognise that the outcomes of the Anglican Reformation are distinctive in that the Anglican Communion possesses both a consistent catholic and protestant strain within it (Sykes, 1978: 16). This suggests that for Anglicanism there is “the idea of elements held in tension with each other” (Sykes, 1978: 16). Such a suggestion of complementarity Sykes argues has the difficulty of finding a way in which it can be used in a rational manner. There is, says Sykes, “a great difference between saying that a body like a church has found it practically possible to contain people who hold opposed and contradictory views, and saying that that church believes that all of the contradictory views are true and in some hitherto undiscovered way reconcilable” (Sykes, 1978: 19). Those who adopt the latter of these two position are seeking for what Sykes describes as a “tame and Anglicanised tertium quid” (Sykes, 1978: 20). Clearly Sykes is opting for the former view in seeking a rational manner in which different ideas can be viewed without seeking a tertium quid. This conclusion has relevance for the present project, since this project is arguing in relation to the specific issue of eucharistic theology within Anglicanism, that there is a rational manner in which the distinctly different theologies or multiformity of the Eucharist can be held in tension. The model developed as part of this project, with dimensions of realism and nominalism, to both moderate and immoderate degrees, suggests that within Anglicanism there are consistent but distinctly different philosophical underpinnings and understandings of the Eucharist. Such a model does not seek to reconcile differences, but seeks instead to recognise the distinctive differences within the same tradition of Christianity and provide a rational means of discussing and conceptualising these differences, not in terms of reconciling them but in terms of recognising that they exist and reflecting critically on them.

In his 1991 work entitled Sacrifice and Redemption. Durham Essays in Theology, Sykes as editor, presents a sustained effort to examine sacrifice and redemption as an aspect of systematic theology and to do this in a rational manner. This work has particular implications for an examination of the theology of the Eucharist. In his Introduction to this work Sykes puts the view that:

“the sacrificial interpretation of the Eucharist, controversial but sustainable in Anglicanism from the seventeenth century, has remained foreign to Lutherans and Calvinist into our own century. For Anglicans it became an almost untouchable sensitive point of contention. An earlier and remarkable focusing of spiritual and theological writing upon the high priesthood of Jesus broke apart on the offence of a sacerdotal interpretation of Christian priesthood popular in the later nineteenth-century ritualist phase of Anglo-Catholicism.” (Sykes, 1991a: 2).

Within Anglicanism it seems that eucharistic sacrifice has been variously interpreted and both rejected and accepted as having a place with the Anglican eucharistic tradition. For Sykes the death of Christ is spoken of as both the atoning sacrifice but also as a ritual commemoration of that death in the Eucharist. “Sacrifice, in other words, is in some sense a datum of Christian theology: doubtless a datum in the sense of a problem to be wrestled with, and elucidated in connection with contemporary aids, but on no account to be given up or despaired of” (Sykes, 1991a: 3). Indeed for Sykes the study of sacrifice as this relates to the Eucharist reveals “the complexity and plurality of themes concealed in this metaphor of sacrifice: its ambiguity” (Sykes, 1991a: 4). This means “that there has never been within Christianity one rational explanation of sacrifice” (Sykes, 1991a: 4-5). This is certainly the case in Anglicanism, as it seems it is for Christianity generally. The case studies of this project have revealed that there is no one rational explanation of eucharistic sacrifice within Anglicanism. In fact some Anglican theologians do not see any connection between sacrifice and the Eucharist other than the way in which the Eucharist assists in the remembering of the past and completed sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Others have argued that in the Eucharist the sacrifice of the cross is made present by its effects, but that this occurs in a way that is not physical and carnal. Essentially the difference in interpretation revolves around a distinction between realism and nominalism, where there are divergent views on the role and relationship of the sign and the signified in the Eucharist. Sykes freely admits that within academic circles “there are still living representatives of the traditional Reformation divisions … those who believe, despite the efforts of contemporary ecumenism, that there is continuing substance in either Luther’s position on the eucharistic sacrifice, or in Trent’s reply” (Sykes, 1991a: 5). This applies as much to Anglicanism as it does to other denominations of Christianity. The critical reference that Sykes makes though is to the Puritan understanding of sacrificial language in relation to the Eucharist. Sykes argues that:

“The protest of Luther against the turning of the eucharist into a good work, had to be made later against the turning of the language of sacrifice into a formula. … The fact that what God desires is the invisible sacrifice, the offering of the broken heart, makes redundant neither the visible sacrifices of the Church, nor the words of the Christian. The cult of the heart … could acquire its own rationalisations as fantastic as anything that the medieval period could produce in relation to ritual practices. But the hallmark of Christian insight into sacrifice at every period and in every tradition appears to be the realisation of the contemporaneity of the crucified and risen Christ.” (Sykes, 1991a: 6).

Sykes’ point is moot for the present study. Clearly at the time of the Reformation (as exemplified by Luther’s protest against the sacrifice of the Mass as a good work for the living and the dead) there was a rejection of immoderate realism, but this rejection of the idea of sacrifice went further to include any language which spoke by way of formula of sacrifice in the Eucharist. Hence the rejection of the concept of eucharistic sacrifice by some Anglicans on the grounds that the sacrifice of Christ was a completed and self-enclosed event in the past which could not be identified with or instantiated in events or signs in the present. The problem, as Sykes describes it though, is that ‘the cult of the heart’ (personal appropriation of the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice by faith) became in itself overly rationalised. The case for this has been argued at length in Hardman More (1991) in her examination of sacrifice in Puritanism. The point Sykes is making concerning sacrifice is that Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection has been contemporised by all type of Christian traditions. The case studies of the present project agree with this conclusion, but also argue that this contemporisation has varied according to the philosophical model underlying the thinking of each position. Nominalists contemporise the sacrifice and resurrection in a subjective manner based on an individual faith dimension, whereas realists tend to contemporise the sacrifice of Christ within a framework of sacramentality, where signs identify with or instantiate the signified sacrifice of Christ. As Sykes suggests and the case studies of this project confirm, both of these contemporisations of sacrifice are found in the Anglican eucharistic tradition.

In a separate essay with the work Sacrifice and Redemption Sykes develops his understanding of the theology of sacrifice. Sacrifice for Sykes links clearly with Christian worship as one of its central notions (Sykes, 1991b: 282) and worship brings people into a new fellowship with God where God’s story becomes people’s story and where rituals, such as the Eucharist externalise the story allowing people to enter and enact the new fellowship with God (Sykes, 1991b: 287). Worship for Sykes “is the reality of the divine-human relationship” (Sykes, 1991b: 286) and the reality of that relationship, among other concepts, is based on the sacrificial death of Christ (Sykes, 1991b: 287). The Eucharist has, rightly or wrongly, argues Sykes, been spoken of as the Christian sacrifice from the earliest days of Christianity (e.g. Justin Martyr in the mid second century). This means that Christians have:

“combined the thought of the centrality of the eucharist with the thought of the centrality of sacrifice in their thinking of the terms of the divine-human relationship.”

such that:

“If the eucharist is central to the worship of the Church, if it is the sacrament of the fellowship between God and humanity, then there may exist something like a presumption in favour of the thought that sacrifice provides us with the most profound terms for speaking of how God and humanity are related” (Sykes, 1991b: 288).

Sykes argues that Paul expresses this interrelated nature of worship and sacrifice when he speaks in 1 Corinthians 11: 25 of the cup in the Eucharist as ‘a new covenant in my blood’. Jesus breaks with the Pharisees’ tradition about purity entails a new understanding of the relation between God and humanity, that is, the new covenant. The establishment of this new covenant has clear sacrificial characteristics which for Paul seem to be externalised in the Eucharist. Jesus gives his own life in sacrifice as the cost of establishing a new relationship between God and people. The particular event in human history (Jesus’ death at Calvary) has universal sacrificial significance. As Sykes says:

“The internal theatre of the heart is redirected by its attitude towards that event. Fellowship with God means participation in the body and blood of Christ given for us.” (Sykes, 1991b: 289).

The new relationship between God and humanity is both internal in the heart and externalised in the Eucharist. This analysis is based on moderate realism, where the Eucharist becomes the sign of the signified sacrifice and new relationship between God and humanity. The sign and the signified are linked in a realist manner, such that the sign identifies with and instantiates the signified. This line of thinking is clearly explicit in Augustine’s City of God, where he says:

“The true sacrifice is offered in every act which is designed to unite us to God in a holy fellowship, every act, that is, which is directed to that final Good which makes possible our true felicity.” (Augustine, City of God, x, 6, edn. Bettenson, 1972: 379).

Christ is, argues Augustine, the mediator who by his manhood allows for the attainment of that good which comes to humanity because Christ “became partaker of our human nature and thus offered us a short cut to participation in his own divine nature” (Augustine, City of God, ix, 15, edn. Bettenson, 1972: 361). Sykes interprets Augustine by arguing that “it is this already defined final good, namely participation in the divine nature, which constitutes the purpose of true sacrifice. The realisation, therefore, of this end is only achieved by the sacrifice of the mediator” (Sykes, 1991b: 290) and “it is for this reason that the sacrifice of Christ is the basis or fundament of the Church, which is his body” (Sykes, 1991b: 291). Continuing to interpret Augustine Sykes says that:

“there is in fact but one object of worship and we owe this one God our service, in various ‘sacraments’ and in ourselves. We are his temple, collectively and as individuals; he dwells both in the union of all and in each individually. When we lift up our hearts to him our heart is his altar. We propitiate him by our own high priest, his own Son. He is the source of our bliss and the goal of all our striving. Hence the command to love God with all our strength: all our powers are to be bent to the worship of God.

Augustine thus refuses to separate worship and the notion of a true sacrifice. … Thus what God desires is the invisible sacrifice, the offering of a broken heart, which cleaves to its maker. The Christian, however, is able to rely for such an act not on his or her own strength but on the self-oblation of Christ. In a number of places, Augustine makes clear that there is one true sacrifice, that of the cross.” (Sykes, 1991b: 291).

Here Sykes quotes Augustine’s Reply to Faustus, where Augustine says:

“Before the coming of Christ, the flesh and blood of this sacrifice were foreshadowed in the animals slain; in the passion of Christ the types were fulfilled by the true sacrifice; after the ascension of Christ, this sacrifice is commemorated in the sacrament.” (Augustine, Reply to Faustus, 20, 21, Online).

Sykes therefore concludes that “the reference to the sacrament of the eucharist makes clear the contemporaneity of the means whereby the Christian’s interior sacrifices are offered to God” (Sykes, 1991b: 292). It is this contemporaneous nature of the offering of the sacrifice of Christ to God that is an expression of moderate realism. The sign (the Eucharist) is linked with the signified (the sacrifice of Christ) in a contemporaneous manner, that is the eucharistic sacrifice. Augustine says much the same in these words:

“This is the reality, and he intended the daily sacrifice of the church to be the sacramental symbol of this; for the Church, being the body of which he is the head, learns to offer itself through him.” (Augustine, City of God, x, 20, edn. Bettenson, 1972: 401).

Clearly for both Augustine and Sykes there is a mediatorial nature to the sacrificial work of Christ and its identification or participation in the Eucharist. This concept for both writers is based on moderate realism. Sykes expresses this in the following passage which argues that sacrifice can be extended to cover dispositions and action other than the ritual presentation of an offering. In answer to why this is so, Sykes says:

“The basic reason lies in the nature of a symbol, and of symbolic actions. Symbolism is never precisely determinable. Its power lies in the breadth of its resonances, not in the clarity of its definition. A symbol establishes itself in a system of communication and may in time respond to changes taking place in other parts of the system. In the case of sacrifice, which is a symbolic means of communication with the divine, there are considerable possibilities for interpretative development. In these instances the ritual activity of sacrifice, having to do with ceremonies of thanksgiving or of contrition and implying the enacting of a covenant, promotes under certain specific circumstances the interpretative activity of including in the concept of sacrifice, the disposition of thanksgiving or contrition, or the activity of obedience.

‘Metaphorical extension’ is thus the process whereby thanksgiving to God or an outpouring of contrition comes to be spoken of as a sacrifice. This need by no means entail the displacement of ritual sacrifices; but plainly in a situation in which for other reasons sacrifices had come to be less highly regarded, the metaphors could come to bear the weight of the original thought, the thought that God may be approached through this particular means. Sacrificial ritual as a specific instance of religious symbolism lends itself to this kind of development. … The death of Christ itself is now seen as a sacrifice; and not merely a sacrifice, but the sacrifice, the new event establishing covenantal relationship between God and humanity itself.” (Sykes, 1991b: 293).

Sykes’ talk of symbols, symbolic actions and the power of their resonances seem to be an expression of moderate realism. There is no suggestion of a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist, but there is a clear statement that the power of that sacrifice is resonant in the Eucharist as a ‘metaphorical extension’. The idea that ‘the metaphor could come to bear the weight of the original thought’ is suggestive of what this project calls instantiation. Through the sign (the Eucharist) the new signified event which establishes a covenantal relationship (the sacrifice of Christ) is instantiated. This is an expression of moderate realism. This is emphasised by Sykes when he speaks of the necessity to conform to the terms of the covenant in both interior and exterior ways. He states that:

“The criticism of ‘ritualism’, that is, trust in the mere performance of the obligatory sacrificial cult, achieves the association of the category of worship with that of genuine interior and exterior conformity to the divine will. If the sacrifice of Christ is consistent with his intentions, words and deeds, then the relationship between God and humanity established by that sacrifice entails an equally consistent interior and exterior conformity to the divine will. Human beings are to offer themselves as living sacrifices, both in body and soul (Rom. 12: 1-2).” (Sykes, 1991b: 295).

For Sykes therefore the Scripture is clear. St Paul’s discussion of the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians revolves around the idea that “the new covenantal relationship in the blood of Christ entails a proclamation in word and deed of the sacrificial death of Christ” (Sykes, 1991b: 296) and the idea that “participation in the fellowship meal, which is participation in Christ’s self-offered body and blood, requires a particular quality of human self-offering” (Sykes, 1991b: 297). The deed where the sacrifice of Christ is proclaimed is the Eucharist and it is here that Christ’s body and blood is to be found – not in any immoderate sense but as a ‘resonance’ which ‘bears the weight of the original thought. This is moderate realism in relation to the presence and sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist.

For Sykes sacrifice defines the terms of the divine-human relationship, which is worship, such that “a theology of sacrifice would be a theology of worship” (Sykes, 1991b: 297). This relationship between sacrifice and worship (including the Eucharist) is firmly based, for Sykes, on moderate realism.

In Unashamed Anglicanism, a book published by Sykes in 1995, there are important comments about the eucharistic theology of Thomas Cranmer in particular. Sykes argues, quoting John Booty (an American Episcopal historian of the Reformation and Elizabethan period – born 1925) that at times Cranmer sounds like a rationalist and at other times he sounds like a mystic. Booty says:

“ … that when Cranmer is most rational, exercising common sense most avidly, he insists upon Christ’s bodily absence, but when he is most devotional, when rationality is most qualified by right reason, he speaks of mutual indwelling.” (Booty, 1976: 365).

When Cranmer is insisting on Christ’s bodily absence in the Eucharist he is separating the signs of the Eucharist (bread and wine) from the signified body and blood of Christ in a plainly nominalist sense. When however, Cranmer speaks in his mystical sense he speaks of a mutual indwelling where Christ is present to the heart and mind of the faithful communicant. If there is a sense in which Cranmer can be said to be speaking in a realist manner, it is in this sense of Christ being present as a mutual indwelling in the heart and mind of the believer by faith. This has been discussed at length in the Cranmer Case Study (1.1), where Cranmer speaks of the faithful communicant ascending in heart and mind to the heavenly altar and there feeding on Christ. Sykes argues that Cranmer speaks of what he calls “a doctrine of the ascension in heart” and in so doing Sykes, in speaking of the movement of the heart and mind to heaven, “implicitly challenges the common assumption that Protestantism is properly described as anti-ritualist” (Sykes, 1995: 24). For Sykes, “scholars have too readily accepted at face value the qualitative difference Protestants have proposed between the external and internal phenomena of faith, between the monuments of a physical landscape and the interior topography of the heart” (Sykes, 1995: 24-25). This proposition has implications for the present study not only in that it questions the assumption that there is definite separation of the external (signs) and the internal (signified) in Protestant theology, but also because it suggests that a deeper analysis of the material involved is needed. This latter point has significant implications for the philosophical analysis of sacramental theology and for the present project. Sykes argues for example that:

“The idea that Cranmer has embraced a standard body-mind dualism, dissociating religion from all contact with physicality cannot be sustained despite the patent influence of Erasmian neo-Platonism. The heart is simply not reducible to the mind.” (Sykes, 1995: 30).

A strict nominalist analysis of the relationship between sign and signified for example, suggests that there is no real link between sign and signified or instantiation of the signified in the sign, other than by linguistic and cognitive means. Sykes’ point then is that it is too simplistic to assume that Cranmer’s eucharistic theology is entirely nominalist, since the idea of a mutual indwelling in the heart of the communicant, is not necessarily achieved by cognitive or linguistic means, such as nominalism suggests. In effect Sykes is arguing a case for realism in Cranmer’s eucharistic theology in a certain sense. This does not mean however, as Francis Clark points out in his work Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Reformation,that Cranmer held a realist view of the Eucharist which was in accord with Catholic theology (Clark, 1967: 159-168). Cranmer did not hold such a view since he clearly separated the signs of bread and wine and the signified body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist (see Cranmer Case Study – 1.1). Sykes however is making the point that Cranmer’s eucharistic theology was not nominalist in every sense, and that when he spoke of the faithful communicant ascending in heart and mind to heaven he was clearly linking the heart with the body and blood of Christ. Examples of Cranmer speaking in this way are set out in the Cranmer Case Study. Does this mean then that faith in heart and mind can be seen as a sign linked with the body and blood of Christ as a mutual indwelling in a realist sense? Sykes suggests that Cranmer speaks of pilgrimage toward heaven and that for Cranmer:

“The Christian life is thus traditionally conceived under the metaphor of ascent, and it is this metaphor to which Cranmer turned so as to provide an interpretation of the nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. By faith, that is, in heart and mind, the believer ascends into the heavens, to feast there at Christ’s table.” (Sykes, 1995: 40).

This does not seem to answer the question sufficiently since it does not specifically link the sign of faith in heart and mind with the signified body and blood of Christ, but only suggests that a person feasts in heaven without specifically stating on what the person feasts. Reference to Cranmer’s own words seems to clarify the issue somewhat more, since Cranmer’s language is quite realist when he speaks of this ascent of heart and mind. Cranmer says in the Defence, for example, that people:

“ … lift up their minds from earth to heaven, and from carnal to spiritual eating, that they should not phantasy that they should with their teeth eat him present here in earth, for his flesh so eaten, saith he, should nothing profit them [referring to John 6]. And yet so they should not eat him, for he would take his body away from them, and ascend with it into heaven; and there by faith and not with teeth, they should spiritually eat him, sitting at the right hand of his Father. … The eating and drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood is not taken in the common signification, with mouth and teeth to eat and chaw a thing being present, but by lively faith in heart and mind to chaw and digest a thing absent, either ascended hence into heaven.” (Defence, edn. Duffield, 1964: 146).

Clearly Cranmer is denying any sense of an immoderate or fleshy eating (‘the common signification’ of eating and drinking), but he is at the same time affirming a spiritual eating and drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood ‘by faith in heart and mind’ even though the ‘thing’ (Christ’s body and blood) is physically absent. It is important to realise here that spiritual eating and drinking does not exclude realism and that sign and signified can be linked in ways other than by physical or natural means. Sykes argues therefore that “to speak of Cranmer’s Lord’s Supper as anti-ritualist or as a merely mental commemoration is absurdly inadequate” (Sykes, 1995: 41).

Sykes does not dismiss the problems with Cranmer’s view and indeed he argues that to speak in the way Cranmer speaks (that is, to interpret Sykes, perhaps a realist linking between faith in heart and mind and the body and blood of Christ) is to put forward a theology of the Eucharist which relies too heavily on “an implicit individualism which locks the believer’s miraculous encounter with the ascended Christ in the apparently uninspectable privacy of the individual heart, rather than open it out to be visibly acknowledged and greeted by a communal act of reverence” (Sykes, 1995: 43). The point here must surely be however, that despite any theological difficulties with Cranmer’s thinking, there is nonetheless an inherently realist interpretation possible in Cranmer, albeit not the signs of bread and wine linked with the signified body and blood of Christ, as Catholic theology would have it, but the sign of faith in heart and mind linked with the body and blood of Christ. The identification in Cranmer is between heart/mind and body/blood, not bread/wine and body/blood.

The significance of this for the present project and for Sykes, whether or not the linking of heart/mind with body/blood is seen as a viable eucharistic theology, is that Cranmer’s eucharistic theology is not entirely dependent on nominalism, but on a particular version of realism as well. Certainly Cranmer is nominalist in relation to the relationship between the signs of bread and wine and the signified body and blood of Christ, but at the same time he is realist in relation to the linking of the sign of faith in heart and mind with the signified body and blood of Christ. This point has been made in the Cranmer Case Study (1.1) of this project. For Sykes this is a crucial matter since it suggests that eucharistic theology in the Anglican tradition may have been treated in a manner which is too simplistic. He argues that:

“ … if we are to make progress at all in the discussion of the subject of contemporary theology we must be clear that the notion of presence itself, especially the sense in which the transcendent can be said to impinge upon our experience, deserves a quality of attention which it rarely receives.” (Sykes, 1995: 42).

Perhaps the way in which Cranmer has been interpreted, by both Anglican Evangelicals and Anglican Catholics alike, has failed to pay enough attention to the philosophical underpinnings of his eucharistic theology, and it could be that this philosophical level of attention is what contemporary theology rarely receives. Some Anglican Catholics (such as Dom Gregory Dix – Case Study 4.28) have, in a simplistic manner, characterised Cranmer’s eucharistic theology as Zwinglian, where there is complete separation between sign and signified, thereby suggesting that Cranmer was entirely nominalist. Some Anglican Evangelicals (such as Robert Doyle – Case Study 4.27) have argued, also in a simplistic manner, for an absence of any sacramental realism in Cranmer’s eucharistic theology. If Sykes’ argument, and the interpretation of the present project, are set alongside both these views, then it seems that neither the Evangelical or Catholic view is an adequate interpretation of Cranmer’s eucharistic theology. In terms of the model set out as part of this project it seems that Cranmer is nominalist in one sense (bread/wine and body/blood of Christ) and realist in another (faith in heart/mind and body/blood of Christ). The implication of this finding, if it is accepted, is that Cranmer does express a linking of sign and signified (a realist view) in the Eucharist, albeit differently to other expressions of realism by virtue of its individual expression, but realism nonetheless. Sykes concludes that if this is so then:

“It becomes impossible to take at its face value the belief of sixteenth-century Protestants that rituals and physical transactions were intrinsically a threat to the spiritual content of Christianity.” (Sykes, 1995: 44).

This finding also brings into question both the negative view of Cranmer, expressed by those who accuse him of nominalism, such as Anglican Catholics like Dix, and the positive view of Cranmer by those, such as Evangelical Anglicans like Doyle, who argue that Cranmer’s eucharistic theology expresses a nominalism and anti-sacramentalism, that is normative for Anglicanism as a perpetuation of Reformation theology. By combining the insights of Sykes with the model of realism and nominalism presented in this project, the “quality of attention” to “the notion of presence” that Sykes speaks of (see above) can be achieved. Those who argue that the eucharistic theology of Thomas Cranmer and of the Reformation are normative for Anglicanism, are, in light of this finding, required to reassess their position. The case studies of this project, in the presentation of their evidence, therefore support the view that the expression of eucharistic theology throughout the Anglican eucharistic tradition is plural or multiform in nature and not monochrome as some would suggest according to their particular theological perspective or party hemeneutic. There exists within Anglicanism a consistent strain of realist eucharist theology and a consistent strain of nominalist eucharistic theology. The case studies of this project suggest that this multiform situation is the situation of Anglican eucharistic theology.

In an essay published in 1996 entitled Ritual and the Sacraments of the Word, Sykes makes additional comments which relate to the Eucharist. Here he argues that memory is a function of the brain and the brain is a physical entity and so:

“an incarnational and sacramental religion like Christianity make much of the fact that of this bodiliness. … Yet evangelical piety, though insistent on the doctrine of the incarnation of the divine Word, and on belief in a bodily resurrection, sometimes distances itself from the physicality of sacramentalism, preferring to speak of obedience to the divine Word in Scripture and proclamation. Christians of that persuasion would not naturally rely on the objectivity of the sacrament under conditions of doubt and distress. Rather they would look for the reassurance from the interiorisation of an objective promise of faith” (Sykes, 1996: 159).

For Sykes this means that “what has been committed to memory is physically within us, and that has become as much part of us as the physical reception of the host at the eucharist. It is indeed the Word made flesh tabernacling among us” (Sykes, 1996: 159). For Sykes there seems to be a realism about the Word as much as there is a realism about the signs (bread and wine) being linked with the body and blood of Christ. The Word is also sign and there is a realist link between Word and the body and blood of Christ, as there is also a realist link between bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ. It is the word that ‘tabernacles’ among us revealing Christ, just as it is the host that ‘tabernalces’ among us revealing Christ. To argue a special case for the Word seems to lack logic and to deny the realism inherent in the relationship between the Word and the presence of Christ as body and blood in the Eucharist.

In Sykes’ analysis the Reformation was responsible for an “emphasis on interiority” (Sykes, 1996: 161) where there is “a separation between physical or external, and spiritual or internal Christianity” (Sykes, 1996: 162). This is essentially what this project has defined as nominalism, where the external sign is separated from, in that it is not linked with the interior signified reality. The reason, Sykes suggests, for this separation in Evangelical thinking is because “externals belong to the realm of works. Justification by faith alone is the secret work of God upon the heart of humankind. Externals of all kind are of the devil unless preceded by the life-changing, interior transformation of one’s standing before God” (Sykes, 1996: 162). Realism in relation to sacramentality is therefore rejected by some Evangelicals, in Sykes’ opinion, because in the mind of these Evangelicals the external sign smacks of justification by works. For Sykes, “once it is established that worship, including sacramental worship, is not offered in the hope that it will appear meritorious in God’s sight, it ceases to be vain” (Sykes, 1996: 162). The accusation of vanity, associated with the offering of sacramental signs to God, rests on the refusal to link the sign with the signified as realism suggests and where the sign becomes the vehicle of the signified, rather than the object of worship or the source of grace in its own right. Where signs are interpreted as the object of worship and the source of grace in their own right then an accusation of immoderate realism is justified. Such an accusation does not however, apply to a moderate realist analysis, properly understood. The problem as Sykes sees it is that:

“The general Reformation tradition of attending to intention leaves undecided the status of the external act. On the other hand, it might be taught that it was unsafe to develop ritual and repetitions, and quite unlawful (as being contrary to Christian freedom) to enforce them. On the other hand it could be argued that, since forms of repetition and ritual were unavoidable it would be preferable to determine what these forms should be than to leave them to the vagaries of local custom or individual whim.” (Sykes, 1996: 162).

The fact that the external act (that is, both signs and actions) is left with undecided status in the Reformation tradition distances the sacramental theology of some Reformed thinkers from any notion of realism. This is certainly evident in many of the Reformation case studies (e.g. Becon – Case Study 1.5) and in some of the modern disciples of such Reformation views (e.g. Ryle – Case Study 3.26, Packer – Case Study 4.39 and Doyle – Case Study 4.27). What is essentially a nominalist sacramental theology places emphasis on proclamation of the word with a desire to illuminate and inform and a consequent subjective interiorisation of the proclaimed word on the part of the individual, rather than any realist sacramental theology which provides resonances and repetitions by use of external signs which are linked with the signified reality and which convey this reality to the individual.

Having raised the matter of Reformation sacramental theology, Sykes comments on recent scholarship which has caused a major revision of thinking regarding individual and corporate piety both before and after the crucial break points of the Reformation, which in this case is the imposition of the two Edwardian Prayer Books on 1549 and 1552 on the English people. Eamon Duffy for example in his book of 1992 entitled The Stripping of the Altars, questions the events and motivation of the English Reformation. Speaking of Duffy, Sykes says:

“Far from sweeping away the last dregs of a debased and hypocritical religion of works, he [Duffy] has shown that the early English Reformation destroyed a delicate and nuanced pattern of lay piety which was devoutly believed in, as well as practised. The Reformation only ‘worked’ because it was ruthlessly imposed by force. … But behind the priest holding the book was the monarch holding the sword.” (Sykes, 1996: 165).

What Sykes’ is really arguing here is that the Reformation in sweeping away the substantial religious practices of individuals and the medieval church, imposes an interiorisation of the liturgy which was based on the principle on the subjection of the individual. The sweeping away was not simply a rejection of external acts and realist conceptions of sacramental theology, so much a part of pre-Reformation eucharistic theology and practice, but a much more complex attempt at political and religious control. In essence this meant the imposition of what is called ‘scripturalism’ on the English people, such that the biblical metaphor of the ‘heart’ became the foundation of liturgical products and where interioristation became the dominant principle (Sykes, 1996: 166). The result of this interiorisation was an inevitable deprecation of external and realist worship. The link between sign and signified was lost in a Reformation effort to establish the biblical metaphor or the heart and the principle of interiorisation. Such a process fits well into nominalism, where sign is not linked with the signified and where external actions and signs become less important and emphasised. This was so since many of the Reformers believed that the freedom of the Gospel was inhibited by external actions and signs and if it was made to operate in a realist sacramental system it would be a doctrine of good works. This argument is also supported by Diarmaid MacCulloch in his 2001 work entitled The Later Reformation in England, 1547-1603, where he argues that in the English Reformation “the emphasis had shifted from object and actions to words” (MacCulloch, 2001: 5). Clearly Sykes does not support a nominalist view of sacramental theology since he ends his chapter with a plea for realism in relation to sacramental worship. He says: “We have every reason to emphasise repetition and common rituals as vehicles of that freedom which is promised in the gospel” (Sykes, 1996: 167). Sykes’ theology of the Eucharist is moderate realist in its linking of acts, actions and signs with the signified gospel promises.

Stephen Sykes

Born 1939

Formerly Principal St John’s College, Durham University and previously Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge and Bishop of Ely